The Provincial Government Council of Cienfuegos examined the situation of agricultural land this Friday, with official criticisms of the obstacles to its allocation and the low levels of productive exploitation, amidst the ongoing food crisis in the country.
During an extraordinary session of that body, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz emphasized the need to remove the obstacles that hinder the effective allocation of agricultural lands and their full productive utilization, one of the chronic issues in the agricultural sector in the province.
Marrero called for an increase in agricultural production through better land allocation, more efficient contracts, and a collection system that allows for the full utilization of existing capacities, highlighted a report from the official newspaper 5 de Septiembre.
He acknowledged that, despite repeated official calls, administrative obstacles persist that limit the actual use of available areas for food production.
The Minister of Agriculture, Ydael Pérez Brito, stated that Cienfuegos has favorable conditions for growth in the sector, but pointed out deficiencies in land use and agricultural yields.
He urged locating areas belonging to the state-owned company AzCuba for new plantations and expanding the cultivated areas, in addition to increasing productivity.
Among the points raised was the underutilization of already installed agricultural infrastructures. Pérez Brito criticized that the 48 electrified irrigation machines in the province are not ensuring the expected performance over approximately 1,900 planned hectares, which limits the impact of the available land for crops.
The statements come in a context marked by the state's inability to reverse the idleness of vast agricultural lands and its dependence on food imports, despite repeated announcements regarding the granting of land for usufruct and the prioritization of the sector.
In Cienfuegos, as in the rest of the country, the official discourse about "unlocking" the land is once again facing structural problems that remain unresolved.
As a background, the official recognition of these "obstacles" is neither new nor exceptional; it has been recurring for more than a decade whenever shortages become undeniable.
The same diagnoses—idle land, bureaucracy, inefficient contracts, low productivity—had already been pointed out after the failed Tarea Ordenamiento, during the pandemic, and in successive assessments by the Ministry of Agriculture, without any changes being made to the centralized structure that stifles the producer.
The delivery of land in usufruct, repeatedly presented as a solution, has functioned more as an administrative allocation than as a real incentive, trapped between state controls, a lack of supplies, and a collection system that discourages production.
In that sense, what happened in Cienfuegos fits a familiar pattern: the State acknowledges failures when the collapse is evident, but it avoids addressing the structural causes that perpetuate them.
That same discourse pattern has now reappeared in the statements made by President Miguel Díaz-Canel during the recent meetings of the Communist Party in Granma and Holguín, where he once again attributed the issue to the "import mentality" rather than the rules of the game that stifle production.
The ruler acknowledged serious failures in planting, collection, and contracting, but the response was once again rhetorical: calling for “thinking differently” while the controls, lack of incentives, and state monopoly that hinders production, sales, and profit remain intact.
The insistence on replacing imports contrasts with empty markets, prohibitive prices, and producers lacking inputs and autonomy, turning the promise of reversing the crisis by 2026 into another political extension.
The result is the same as always: repeated diagnoses, recycled slogans, and a question without a practical answer for the population: how does this change in mindset translate, here and now, into food, electricity, and real economic relief?
Filed under: